Rugby-Britain's sevens teams to host Olympic warm-up event in May

GENEVA - China's Sinopharm state company has offered substantial support for the COVAX programme to provide COVID-19 vaccines mainly to poor countries, a WHO official said on Friday after the global health body gave emergency approval to Sinopharm's vaccine. Senior WHO adviser Br...

By Alan Baldwin -Seven times world champion Lewis Hamilton was fastest in Spanish Grand Prix practice on Friday as the Mercedes driver prepared for a weekend that could bring him a record-stretching 100th Formula One pole position and boost his overall lead. The Briton,...

By Nathan Frandino - Live concerts are on the menu for home delivery, as musicians and audiences seek to satisfy their appetite for human interaction. As the sun set in Piedmont, California, about 20 masked revelers gathered on the back porch of a home. Lit up by a...

By Sarah Young LONDON -Britain will allow people in England to resume international travel from May 17 but is limiting the number of destinations open for quarantine-free holidays to just a handful of countries as it cautiously emerges from lockdown restrictions. Portug...

By Herbert Lash and Ritvik Carvalho NEW YORK/LONDON - The dollar slid to a two-month low, commodity prices jumped and major global equity indexes scaled new peaks on Friday after weak U.S. jobs data for April tamped down fears that a booming economy would ignite inflation and hig...

By Marco Aquino LIMA - Peruvian right-wing candidate Keiko Fujimori has shrunk the gap on socialist rival Pedro Castillo in the country's presidential election race, according to a poll released on Friday, signally a closer contest in the June 6 vote. The Datum poll...

By Sarah White PARIS - L'Oreal's make-up sales are set to bounce back to pre-COVID-19 pandemic levels, the French group's new chief executive said on Friday, with women opting for brighter colours in their post-crisis makeovers. Cosmetics groups were hit by shop clo...

By Yingzhi Yang and Tony Munroe BEIJING -Shares of Chinese gaming giant Tencent-backed online insurance technology firm Waterdrop Inc tumbled 14.5% in their New York debut on Friday. American depositary shares of the company opened at $10.25, before recovering to $11.50...

-Senior health official Nancy Messonnier has resigned from her position at the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, the agency's Director Rochelle Walensky said on Friday. Messonnier, who warned the United States about the COVID-19 pandemic last year, has been the directo...

MADRID - Rafa Nadal was knocked out of the Madrid Open quarter-finals stage 6-4 6-4 by German Alex Zverev on Friday. Nadal, a five-time winner in the Spanish capital, was the favourite and top seed having lifted the Barcelona Open trophy last month but played below par on a swel...

LONDON - Britain will allow international travel to resume from May 17 but is limiting the number of destinations open for quarantine-free holidays to just 12 countries as it cautiously emerges from lockdown restrictions. Countries including Portugal and Israel made a green lis...

By Shivani Kumaresan and Devik Jain -Britain’s mid-cap index closed at a record high on Friday as hopes of a stronger economic recovery lifted industrial and consumer discretionary stocks, while Meggitt shares soared on a takeover report. The domestically focused mid-c...

PARIS - Pressure on the French hospital system from the COVID-19 epidemic eased for the fourth day in row and the number of virus deaths in hospitals was down again compared to a week ago. The health ministry reported that the number of people in hospital with the virus fell by...

By Sruthi Shankar and Ambar Warrick - European stocks closed at a record high on Friday, marking strong weekly gains as positive economic data and upbeat earnings underpinned hopes of a swift economic recovery from the COVID-19 pandemic. The pan-European STOXX 600 i...

By Gabriela Baczynska BRUSSELS -Lobbying by Poland and Hungary has led to the removal of the phrase "gender equality" from a Friday declaration on advancing social cohesion in the European Union as it strives to rebuild from the COVID-19 pandemic. Poland's nationalist r...

MEXICO CITY - Production of Russia's Sputnik V COVID-19 vaccine will likely begin in Mexico during the final week of June, as the government reviews its emergency use authorization this week, the Mexican health ministry said on Friday. (Reporting by Adriana Barrer...

BEIJING - Chinese ride-hailing giant Didi Chuxing, which is backed by SoftBank, Alibaba and Tencent, said on Friday that 3.1% of passenger fees for rides will go towards its profit last year. Drivers can on average get 79.1% of what customers pay for a ride, Didi posted on WeChat...

DUBAI - Amnesty International said on Friday Yemen's Houthi authorities must halt plans for forced virginity testing and release an actor and model the human rights group says has been detained on "spurious grounds." Twenty-year-old Yemeni Intisar al-Hammadi was arrested in Feb...

MILAN - Italy reported 207 coronavirus-related deaths on Friday against 258 the day before, the health ministry said, while the daily tally of new infections fell to 10,554 from 11,807. Italy has registered 122,470 deaths linked to COVID-19 since its outbreak emerged in February...

MEXICO CITY - Mexico has sent a diplomatic note asking the United States to suspend funding for an anti-corruption group critical of the government, President Andres Manuel Lopez Obrador said on Friday. Lopez Obrador said the formal protest was sent because of financial backing f...

By Amlan Chakraborty NEW DELHI - The Indian cricket board will explore all options to try to complete this year's Indian Premier League (IPL) but is yet to discuss offers from English counties to host the remaining matches, a senior official told on Friday. The eig...

- Formula One champions Mercedes will not be replacing Valtteri Bottas this season unless he is unable to race, team boss Toto Wolff said on Friday. The Finn is fourth overall and 37 points behind championship-leading team mate Lewis Hamilton after three rounds. Bot...

By David Ljunggren OTTAWA - Amnesty International on Friday apologized to jailed Kremlin critic Alexei Navalny for stripping him of its "prisoner of conscience" status and said it would restore the designation. Amnesty announced on Feb. 24 that it would stop referri...

- The U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) is reviewing an estimate of global COVID-19 deaths from the University of Washington that is more than double the official count to determine if the CDC figures should be revised, CDC Director Rochelle Walensky said at a Friday press...

- Chelsea cannot afford to get carried away by their run to the finals of the Champions League and FA Cup and must focus on landing the two trophies to reward their recent progress, manager Thomas Tuchel said on Friday. Chelsea visit Manchester City in the Premier League on Satur...

By William James and Elizabeth Piper LONDON -Voters in an opposition stronghold turned en masse to British Prime Minister Boris Johnson's Conservatives, boosting his parliamentary majority on Friday despite a high COVID-19 death toll, last year's record economic slump and cronyism ch...

MOGADISHU - Hundreds of Somali forces who back the opposition began returning to their barracks on Friday after reaching an agreement with the prime minister following clashes over the tenure of the president, a spokesman for the troops said. Somali lawmakers voted on Saturday to...

By John Chalmers and Marine Strauss BRUSSELS -Five European Union countries distanced themselves on Friday from the idea of waiving patent rights on coronavirus vaccines, saying the key to ending the COVID-19 pandemic was making more vaccines quickly. Leaders of the 27-...

HARARE - Pakistan's Abid Ali and Azhar Ali struck centuries as the tourists took an early grip on the second test against Zimbabwe, reaching 268-4 at the close on the opening day at the Harare Sports Club on Friday. The pair set a 236-run record for a second wicket partnership in...

GENEVA - The World Health Organization announced on Friday it had approved a COVID-19 vaccine from China's state-owned drugmaker Sinopharm for emergency use. The vaccine, one of two main Chinese shots that collectively have already been given to hundreds of millions of people in...